MS Windows Home Server

WHS Basic specifications

The basic specifications of my WHS are shown below.

Case Chieftec BA-02B-B-B Uni Full Tower Chassis[/B] £ 85.00

PSU Corsair HX620w 620w Modular PSU £ 85.00

MB ASUS M2N32 WS PRO nForce 590SLI Socket AM2 £96.00

CPU AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5600+ Dual Core 2.8GHz, 2x 1MB £87.00

RAM 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-5400 £33.00

Graphics card 64/256MB ASUS 6200LE £18.00

HHD 500 Gb Samsung HD501LJ Spinpoint T £63.00

Gigabit switch Netgear GS608 8 Port Gigabit Platinum Switch £38.00

OS MS Windows Home Server WIN32 ENG 1PK DSP + 10 Clients £92.00


Case and PSU

I have bought a large tower case, the Chieftec BA-02B-B-B Uni Full Tower Chassis. The case is large and has room for expansion, up to 10 3.5 inch drives, before converting the 5.25 inch bays. Also with 4 or 5 fans, hopefully things should run cool. As I want limited restrictions on the number of hard drives, I also invested in a PSU that comes complete with 8 SATA power connections, hopefully that will be enough to begin with. I chose upon recommendation the Corsair HX620w 620w Modular PSU.

Motherboard/CPU/RAM

I realise that the Motherboard and CPU does not need to be highly specified for a WHS box. However my recent HTPC is an AMD X2 based processor, the 4800 and at times it can struggle with the demands I place on it. As such I would like to replace this CPU with one with more oomph and use this CPU for my WHS. Consequently Iam limited to an AMD Processor

I also want the freedom to add as many SATA drives as possible, and ideally leaving my PCL cards free for future expansion. As such I would prefer a Motherboard with 6 or more SATA connections, an E-SATA connection and even onboard graphics…

Back to reality… I have found one mother board with 9 SATA connections, one E-SATA, 10 USB ports that will accept my existing CPU, but no onboard graphics. The Mb is an ASUS M2N32 WS PRO and is about £100. Over specified I know but I am aware of the possible SATA connection issue in the future.

Looking around, the only motherboards that I have currently found with onboard graphics tend to have only 4 SATA connections and rarely an E-SATA port.. By the time I have invested in additional PCL cards, the prices almost matches the Asus, though on top of that I have to invest in a cheap and cheerful graphics card.

The CPU for the HTPC will become the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz) Socket CPU and the 4800 version will find its way into the WHS.

2 GB of RAM as it is cheap, and will allow future expansion

Hopefully this system may well be over specified at the moment but who knows what plans Microsoft has for the next version of WHS, if there's going to be one? I have read and heard talk of it allowing for centralised TV tuners that can be streamed to multiple media players around the home, and I'm sure there are other funky ideas too.

I hope this answers those questions regarding my WHS specs. The initial install will have two 500 GB drives, two 750 drives and possibly a couple of other drives that I have floating around.

Adrian

This WHS system has now been built, and detaisl and photographs of the build can be found in this thread here.

In the end, I have now got four Samsung drives, and two WD 750 (They were on offer at Scan and I know why, one failed within 24 hours casuing a BSOD).

The software is installed with minimal drama; and three Desktops have been configured to back up onto the WHS system.

I have also configured the router and WHS to allow me to post photographs onto the web

I need to play with the system for a while and install add ons as appropaite. In particualr I am familia tr with MS Sharepoint Services from work, and would like to configure my server to host SPS hopefully.

Please feel free to post any questions.

Adrian

Managed to install Sharepoint Services last night using the guide from
Wegotserved

Looks simple enough, but need to configure it.

I will lst the Add-ins that I have installed in the next few days

Adrian

Nice build... looking forward for the add-ins

Hi Sapper, I have a very similar system same motherboard.
I've got it all running well but without any power option, no sleep or hibernate. I've double checked the Bios and updated the Bios to thge latest 2200.
Did you have any issues with Power?
Many thanks